Religious and Spiritual Change in College

Abstract

A long line of research has attempted to examine an assumed conflict between religious belief and scientific knowledge by assessing the religious beliefs of individuals with a high level of scientific training and education, such as faculty at universities. This research has established that there are differences in levels of religious belief across different disciplines, but because of data limitations it has not been able to adequately assess the causal nature of these differences. The research presented here overcomes these limitations using longitudinal data examining different dimensions of religious and spiritual belief among undergraduates. Using four latent variable concepts assessing both positive and negative dimensions of traditional and nontraditional forms of belief, the analysis shows no evidence that students in the natural sciences show a greater decrease in religious belief compared with students in other fields.